Reducing Detention To Help Juvenile Offenders

By Mary Branham Dusenberry

It doesn’t make sense to take a student who isn’t going to school out of school even more by placing them in detention for truancy.

That’s the view of the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Rand Young, a technical assistance provider with JDAI, shared alternatives to detention for low-risk juvenile offenders during the Public Safety and Justice Workshop Sunday.

Instead of detaining the youth, Young suggested alternative rehabilitation options, including community service work projects, weekend programs, house arrest and electronic monitoring, day and evening reporting centers, and foster and shelter care programs.

“Take a look at the needs of kids and you can generally find ways to support them in the community,” Young said.

That offers many benefit, including a tremendous cost-savings—detention costs states an average $200 per day while alternatives programs can cost as little as $35 a day, he said.

Young said people are often concerned that crime rates will increase when fewer juvenile offenders are detained. But that hasn’t happened in the 100 jurisdictions in 25 states and Washington, D.C., that have implemented JDAI, Young said.

In fact, detaining young people who commit minor offenses such as truancy, minor theft, alcohol offenses and disorderly conduct alongside those who commit more serious crimes may make the situation worse, he said. And, he said, detention interrupts education for those youth.

More importantly, Young said, “the best predictor of those who go into the adult system is those who are detained as juveniles.”

JDAI suggests eight strategies to deal with the juvenile detention problem: Collaboration among all involved in the system; use of data to drive all policies and procedures; creation of an objective risk assessment “to detain the right youth,” Young said; use of alternative programs to detention; expedited case processing; options for probation violations; options to minimize failure to appear citations; a reduction in racial disparities; and regular detention facility inspections.

“They only work as a complete package,” Young said.

The communities that have employed these strategies, he said, have been successful in reducing costs for the justice system and attaining better results with those youthful offenders.

“It’s more complicated than just opening doors and kicking kids out of facilities,” he said.